Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

diner

Sometimes we go peo­ple-watch­ing at the Elgin Street Diner at two in the morn­ing. Not just cause it’s one of the only places still open, but because it tends to be too busy before then. It’s hard to point some­one out or steal a glance with­out being noticed when the tables are all occu­pied.

We try to fig­ure out rela­tion­ships from the way peo­ple sit, sto­ries from the state of their shoes. Mostly it’s young drunks, try­ing to set­tle their stom­achs with some grease before head­ing home. Frat boys from the bars, clus­ters of girls in tight dress­es from the clubs. The ones who’ve had too much are easy to spot: when they aren’t mak­ing a bee­line to the bath­room, they’re star­ing at their plates, won­der­ing how much warn­ing they’ll need for the next run.

But every so often is an enig­ma, like four men in car­go shorts who aren’t young enough to be sin­gle, but not old enough to be divorced. The cor­po­rate logos on their golf shirts belie the no-upkeep, don’t-care-any­more look that comes with father­hood. It’s a breed rarely seen out beyond nine on a Thursday night, and one that looks espe­cial­ly out of place at a time when the only cars on the road are taxis and cruis­ers.

I don’t judge, but I sure do won­der.

Elgin Street Diner

This is our way of escap­ing the reg­u­lar lives we lead, before catch­ing up on enough sleep to beat morn­ing rush-hour on the way home, and back to anoth­er day of real­i­ty. No one told us about the roles we had to play as adults, or the respon­si­bil­i­ties that come with it. To com­bat signs of aging, share onion-bacon pou­tine, choco­late-banana milk­shakes, and a slice of peanut-but­ter cake every now and then. Just an hour here is plen­ty, as long as it’s done on a reg­u­lar basis.

When we’re fend­ing off exhaus­tion to spend one more moment in each oth­er’s com­pa­ny, shar­ing food we should­n’t eat and words we should­n’t say, I know I’m the only one she wants to be with there. It’s more proof to me than the things she writes and the rit­u­als we share. So many peo­ple take that kind of unspo­ken faith for grant­ed, but it’s still new to me, and I’m learn­ing how much I need to be spe­cial to some­one.

learning to surf

The last few days have been rough to say the least, and I’m still try­ing to sur­vive moments of cri­sis while bat­tling hunger and exhaus­tion. Times like this are a les­son on how strong the pri­mal will to sur­vive is, when the mind shuts out every­thing except doing what needs to be done, cause there isn’t room for pan­ic or sur­ren­der.

I’m learn­ing to accept these spells as a sim­ple fact of life. There’s nev­er going to be a sin­gle defin­ing moment from when I’ll for­ev­er be okay, when I can say they won’t hap­pen any more. Being well takes as much effort as patience, hap­pi­ness, and for­give­ness. It’s both the work and adven­ture of a life­time to become a bet­ter per­son in so many ways.

Sometimes Heather G sends me a quote or teach­ing, and relates to me how it’s help­ing her with her reac­tions or trig­gers. With her unflinch­ing­ly calm demeanour, I could­n’t imag­ine her hav­ing any of these kinds of issues, but it’s a reminder that every­one can use a lit­tle bit of work. I used to think she was sim­ply a nice per­son; now I under­stand her kind­ness has been con­scious­ly and con­sis­tent­ly cul­ti­vat­ed over many years1.

As a per­son with­out a dark past, she has no under­stand­ing of what I go through in these times, no idea how to han­dle me, but it does­n’t stop her from car­ing so much. Sometimes that means stop­ping by for a talk even if she’s not sure I’m home, or drop­ping off a meal from one of my favourite restau­rants, or giv­ing me a small but mean­ing­ful gift. It’s a tru­ly self­less empa­thy, one that does­n’t need a rea­son. She cares sim­ply because I suf­fer, not because she agrees with why. I don’t know many peo­ple who show any­one that kind of com­pas­sion (not even them­selves). And yet she con­sid­ers her­self a begin­ner on the path of awak­en­ing, when there’s so much I already have to learn from her.

For now, I’m fig­ur­ing out how to embrace the wounds, and let the anger, fear, and hurt flow through me when my cop­ing mech­a­nisms aren’t enough. I know I can’t change the world, but I have the pow­er to change myself and how I han­dle things. Or as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf”.

  1. She once went on a silent med­i­ta­tion retreat in Tibet, where 20 peo­ple live togeth­er but don’t talk for three days. “Little eye con­tact through­out and silent, mind­ful eat­ing”, she tells me. Like a mind­ful­ness boot­camp, that sounds as intim­i­dat­ing as any mil­i­tary one. [↩]

Level 8

Shawn and I go deep once a week, usu­al­ly with a decent amount of psy­cho­analy­sis mixed in with our Magic match­es. I real­ized I still need ther­a­py, but in a dif­fer­ent form from what my ther­a­pist could offer1. I need to work with some­one who isn’t restrict­ed by time lim­its when I’m in the mid­dle of extreme­ly time-sen­si­tive events, and it’s vital that I work at my own pace, since it’s easy to rush things (that should be dealt with very care­ful­ly) when it costs $180/hour. He also stretch­es me out in all the right ways, and I’m learn­ing that phys­i­cal com­fort is often just as impor­tant as emo­tion­al val­i­da­tion.

Shawn admits it’s all pop-psy­chol­o­gy since he has no for­mal edu­ca­tion, but he’s spe­cial­ized in peo­ple and rela­tion­ships for so long that it’s no less effec­tive. Sometimes, it’s scary to work with some­one who func­tions at such a high­er lev­el of under­stand­ing of the world. I recent­ly heard Jon Kabat-Zinn say, “Buddha was not a Buddhist”, which I start­ed repeat­ing to Shawn when try­ing to relate mind­ful­ness with mod­ern reli­gion. He fin­ished my thought by say­ing, “and Jesus was not a Christian”, an idea I’d only come to after a lot more research and reflec­tion. He was able to reach the same con­clu­sion by exam­in­ing pat­terns in his exist­ing knowl­edge; an extreme­ly pro­found and impact­ful con­cept to me, which I was still try­ing to ful­ly grasp, was applied com­mon sense to him.

That means I’m occa­sion­al­ly con­front­ed with how nar­row-mind­ed I can be in com­par­i­son. It’s mess­ing with things I take for grant­ed, like my ideas of right or wrong, parts of my world-view I’ve held for so long and with­out ques­tion. Sometimes, I real­ize the per­son I was until that very moment would have done things I’d now con­sid­er embar­rass­ing (being judgmental/intolerant/hateful), based on igno­rance, parochial­ism, or naïveté. Thankfully, I’m also get­ting bet­ter at accept­ing my past self(ves) by under­stand­ing all the influ­ences that have led me to think a cer­tain way. It also helps know­ing that the tru­ly impor­tant thing is that I have the pow­er to change now, and that it’ll affect me pos­i­tive­ly for the rest of my life.

Shawn used to say I was a wiz­ard stuck on lev­el 7, always on the cusp of lev­el­ling up. I had enough wis­dom and intel­li­gence and oth­er attrib­ut­es to be a much more pow­er­ful char­ac­ter, but was still a mage who could­n’t start his main quest, due to a very low stat in his rela­tion­ship score. This was hold­ing me back because rela­tion­ships are a huge part of my needs; iron­ic that I’m also so bad at them.

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months though, through a new aware­ness of deep­er parts of myself, and a view of the world that’s get­ting more objec­tive. I’m apply­ing these things by pur­su­ing healthy inter­ests, which cur­rent­ly means build­ing my rela­tion­ships and prac­tic­ing uni­lat­er­al virtue. While the lat­ter has been both empow­er­ing and hum­bling, it’s also dras­ti­cal­ly shak­en my under­stand­ing of my rela­tion­ships, my needs, and my past. I can tell I’m only begin­ning to fig­ure out the dynam­ics of peo­ple and how they func­tion, but Shawn says just com­ing to that under­stand­ing means I’ve final­ly reached lev­el 8, and with that foun­da­tion, I can begin the next part of my jour­ney.

Then he gave me a high-five. My ther­a­pist nev­er did that.

  1. Not that he was bad in any way. It’s just that the nature of open­ness tends to get more com­pli­cat­ed when mon­ey is involved. You know some­one tru­ly cares when they lis­ten with­out hav­ing to get paid, and it’s eas­i­er to be com­fort­able with that. [↩]

the loving dominant

My rela­tion­ships func­tion best in a one-on-one con­text, when I’m giv­ing a sin­gle per­son my full atten­tion or vice ver­sa. I see myself as the dom­i­nant most of the time. But pow­er flows from the bot­tom up and I’m a pleas­er too, so I fre­quent­ly assume the sub­mis­sive role cause I enjoy it (need it?) so much. Knowing that I can make peo­ple hap­py is some­thing I thrive on.

At heart though, I’m a very dom­i­nant per­son, and I nev­er real­ized I was miss­ing an out­let for those ten­den­cies until Shawn hand­ed me the remote as we were about to watch Game of Thrones. He read me well enough to know that I enjoy tak­ing care of lit­tle details, and he’s even more of a pleas­er than I am, so he gave me con­trol, even though I rec­og­nize that he’s the more dom­i­nant per­son1.

Over time, I’ve become the one to do the talk­ing, to decide what we do, to make the small choic­es that remind me I have wants and needs as much as any­one else. Shawn’s a per­son I respect, and he’s nat­u­ral­ly “bet­ter” in the ways that are impor­tant to me, so being in con­trol when we hang out has been real­ly ful­fill­ing. I’m get­ting bet­ter at speak­ing out about things that both­er me and think­ing of myself and being stronger in gen­er­al.

  1. I high­ly val­ue intel­li­gence, so it’s nat­ur­al for me to sub­mit to more intel­li­gent peo­ple, and he’s way more intel­li­gent than me. He’s also a lot stronger of char­ac­ter. [↩]

a quiet moment

I took a break from gui­tar. Not a con­scious deci­sion, just days that were busy enough that I did­n’t think of pick­ing her up, which means I don’t even know how long I’d stopped. All I know is that it was long, cause I feel the strings vibrat­ing through every piece of wood that touch­es my body now, one of those sen­sa­tions you stop notic­ing after enough time.

I haven’t had much to say either. Nothing seems impor­tant. At the same time, I’m try­ing to move away from this social media over­load, where so many peo­ple speak only cause the pow­er to do makes them believe they should. It’s mak­ing the gaps between my entries longer and longer, and I won­der if I’ll even­tu­al­ly stop writ­ing alto­geth­er.

getting dressed

All I have are mem­o­ries of lives I lived so long ago that I feel like I’m watch­ing them in 8mm. The friends and the lovers, the love and the hate, the cycles and the pat­terns. I’m only now sort­ing out the mean­ing of each one, maybe cause I’ve final­ly grown enough to under­stand myself and my rela­tion­ship with the world at large. It’s com­fort­ing to see how far I’ve come when com­par­ing the per­son I am now to each per­son I used to be.

But such progress came at the cost of my inno­cence; we aren’t always ready to learn the hard­er lessons, and sur­viv­ing some­times means we change in ways that pre­vent us from becom­ing the peo­ple we’re meant to be. I’m try­ing to take back that inno­cence now, cause I know my hap­pi­ness is at stake.